Ramblings of an Emergency Physician in Texas

Michael Crichton: 1942-2008

(CBS)Best-selling author and filmaker Michael Crichton died unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, after a courageous and private battle against cancer, according to a statement released by his family. He was 66. Crichton is best known as the author of "Jurassic Park" and the creator of "ER." His most recent novel, "Next," about genetics and law, was published in December 2006.

What a terrific writer. I got a lot of entertainment from his work, but his first book I read before I knew he was going to be a Big Deal: Five Patients, published in 1969; he assembled the stories while a 4th year medical student at MGH. It’s a good read, and the lesson still applies.

Comments

I have been an MC fan ever since I can remember. The first of his I read was The Andromeda Strain (still my favourite) and it was just as gripping the second time around. Too bad. I’m sure he still had great stories in him.

As I researched these old fears, to find out what had been said in the past, I made several important discoveries. The first is that there is nothing more sobering than a 30 year old newspaper. You can’t figure out what the headlines mean. You don’t know who the people are. Theodore Green, John Sparkman, George Reedy, Jack Watson, Kenneth Duberstein. You thumb through page after page of vanished concerns—issues that apparently were vitally important at the time, and now don’t matter at all. It’s amazing how many pressing concerns are literally of the moment. They won’t matter in six months, and certainly not in six years. And if they won’t matter then, are they really worth our attention now?

But as David Brinkley once said, “The one function TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were.”